Category: Primo

Last week-end the viking and I, escaped the heat of Caronte and traveled to Norway for a couple of days. Our final destination was a tiny village in the middle of nowhere: Løm, Oppland. Population 2,399 – 16 Celsius.

It’s hot. I am not sure why I picked summer to inaugurate a food&more blog but I never chose the easy path. Moving to Switzerland from Italy, I thought, would have meant cool summer days, green meadows and happy cows but it’s official: It’s desert- freaking hot and I am melting.

I am longing the holidays: lazy days, the sound of cicadas, a swimming pool and a pile of books lined up on my kindle. This summer, we’ll go to Tuscany, to a tiny village close to Siena. After that, I will travel alone down south to see my family and come back home well fed and with at least one bag full of food.

It took me 5 years to open this blog. Five years spent cooking, for me, for friends , families and even for enemies. I tried to recover my sense of self, which I thought I lost, through my hands and my taste buds. The viking, as my family from the south of Italy calls my husband, a true Norwegian, began to train for a marathon in the hope of losing cm from his waist, while I neurotically chopped, tossed, baked and fried. Today, my bathing suit is laughing at me from the drawer and food has become an compulsive obsession.

My name is Daniela, still 39. Calabrian born, adopted by Florence and Rome, currently living in Switzerland. I am the grandchild of Agata, called Catuzza, 96 who is still cooking and eating like she was 20. She taught me the love (and obsession) for pans, pots, sauces, salted anchovies and fried aubergines. I’ve never received a recipe with exact measurements from her. ‘Just enough’ has become a compass in my cooking.

This blog is an attempt to ‘salvare capre e cavoli‘ (save the goat and the cabbage) which could also be translated into “using a boomerang to kill 2 birds“.